MOTIONLESS PRINTING BASED ON GUIDING MELT POLYMER JET USING PROGRAMMABLE ELECTRIC RELAY: DISCRETIZED MODEL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

In this study, an FDM 3D printer is modified into a motionless 3D printer, which has the potential to print patterns in a noiseless manner with improved resolution and in less time. In this motionless 3D printer, both nozzle and collector are fixed, while the extruded polymer melt is driven by high voltage switching points on the collector. By this approach, simple 3D patterns such as multilayer circles, squares and lines have been printed using two polymer melts with different rheological properties, High Temperature Polylactic Acid (HTPLA) and Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS). Melt electrospinning set-up is also modified to motionlessly print patterns, which allows for greater flexibility in varying parameters such as flowrate and application of voltage at the nozzle. Melt electrospinning produces fibers in the micron range leading to high resolution prints, making it a viable additive manufacturing procedure. Furthermore, a discretized, non-isothermal bead and spring model is developed to probe 3D patterns. The effect of parameters such as number of conducting points, switching time, voltage, and material properties on the accuracy of the printed 3D patterns are thoroughly studied, and we demonstrated that various 3D fiber collection patterns obtained from the experiments are favorably compared with the simulation results.